Libby: ‘I Will Not Be Sacrificed So Karl Rove Can be Protected’

Jon Ponder

In his opening statement to jurors today, Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s lawyer said Libby believed his colleagues in the Bush administration were setting him to take a fall for Karl Rove in the CIA Leak investigation:

I. Lewis Libby’s attorney countered with a White House effort of his own, one in which Libby was blamed for the leak to protect Bush political adviser Karl Rove’s own disclosures.

“They’re trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,” attorney Theodore Wells said, recalling a conversation between Libby and his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, as the leak investigation heated up in 2003. “I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.”

In laying out his case against Libby, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told jurors he had eveidence that at the time of the leak, Libby learned the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a spy assigned to monitor the black market for weapons of mass destruction, from five different sources inside the government, including his boss, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney.

But later, when he was interrogated by the F.B.I. and a grand jury, Libby did not mention any of the five sources:

Libby told investigators he learned about Plame from NBC News reporter Tim Russert. But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House.

4 Comments

No, Libby won’t be sacrificed to protect Rove. He will be sacrificed to protect Dick Cheney. After all, if he’s convicted he can still be pardoned.
(see the 1/17/7 edition of Democracy Now!, or Murray Waas’s blog at WhateverAlready.blogspot.com)

Chill out, Scooter. Go ahead and throw yourself in front of the oncoming truck.
Sort of “Get one for the Ripper”.
The Ripper being the Dark Lord himself, Dick Cheney.

Everyone knows that if by some sleight of hand you are convicted, you’ll be pardoned in late December 2008 or early January 2009.
That is, if the world is still alive then and hasn’t been turned into a smoking, radioactive hulk.

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